Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey (27 page)

CECILIA TAN

T
HE SUCCESS OF
FIFTY SHADES OF GREY
may seem sudden, but like many “overnight sensations” the apparent suddenness is the result of two forces: one, the cultural blindness that makes books like this invisible until they reach a tipping point into mass consciousness, and two, the many sociological and commercial forces that have been continuously at work in the background in the years previous. I want to examine one of those forces, the still-burgeoning but long-established world of fanfiction, or “fanfic” for short.

Most folks know the story by now.
Fifty Shades
began life as a piece of Twilight fanfic, but an “alternate universe” version in which Edward isn’t a vampire, but merely a mysterious rich man, and Bella isn’t a high school student, but in college. What most people may not know is just how incredibly common it is for preexisting characters and/or universes to be used as a vehicle for intense erotic fantasizing onto the page (or screen) by women all over the world. Fanfiction.net, an online archive, has 25,000 Twilight-based stories alone, and if the site allowed
explicitly sexual stories, there would be even more. The Archive of Our Own (AO3), a fanfic archive begun in 2008, has over 400,000 fics archived, with more being added every day. In December 2010 the site drew almost 250,000 unique visitors. As of June 2012, that monthly number had grown to 1.5 million. That is, simply put, a lot of stories and a lot of readers. And that’s only at one of hundreds of websites where fanfic can be found.

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While not all fanfic is romantic or erotic, a huge portion of it is: about 20 percent of what’s on AO3 is marked “explicit” and another 20 percent or so is marked “mature.” Three of the tags most frequently applied to stories at AO3 are “romance,” “relationship(s),” and “sexual content.” Which means thousands of writers and millions of readers are participating in an online culture that produces huge volumes of sexy stories. And the vast majority of both those writers and readers are women.

This hotbed of female-driven expressions of lust and love is not new. It predates the internet. Fanfic’s modern roots are in the 1960s and the growth of
Star Trek
fandom, whose write-in campaigns famously kept the TV series on the air. Camille Bacon-Smith published one of the defining works on the subject of
Star Trek
fan writers and the fanfiction community twenty years ago:
Enterprising Women
, a 1992 University of Pennsylvania Press book. In it, she calls the world of fanfiction “a conceptual space where women can come together and create … outside the restrictive boundaries that men have placed on women’s public behavior.” She also names the writing of fanfic “a subversive act, undertaken by housewives and librarians … under the very noses of husbands and bosses who would not approve and children who should not be exposed to such blatant acts of civil disobedience.” And women banding together to read and write love stories about pop culture icons
was
a highly subversive act.
Which was more subversive in its time: the fact that fan writers used copyrighted characters as the vehicles for their fantasies, or that they wrote and shared such vivid fantasies about sex and romance in the first place?

Today, a new generation has grown up from that same community and has proliferated wildly in the hothouse of anonymity that is the internet. Is reading and writing sexual stories and romance still seen as civil disobedience? Is it still something to hide from the genteel sensibilities of the menfolk? I would say yes, at least in some quarters, judging by the number of fans who feel the need to use pseudonyms. But many others are much more empowered. And the breakthrough of
Fifty Shades of Grey
presents an opportunity not only for fanfic writers and readers to come out of the closet, but also for female readers of erotica and erotic romance to, as well.

Romance has long been the biggest selling segment of all published fiction, and yet for all the decades that it has topped the moneymaking genres list, it is still thought of by some readers to be a “guilty pleasure” and a source of shame instead of a source of pride. Shouldn’t something “everyone” is doing be a cultural norm? Perhaps one of the best things about the runaway success of
Fifty Shades of Grey
and its pervasiveness is that it blows open the closet door, at least in terms of itself. I saw no fewer than three women reading the book while waiting to board an airplane recently, and none of them were making any attempt to hide it. And who knows how many others, in that same airport terminal, were reading it on their Kindle or smartphone invisibly? And how many beyond them read it in its original fanfic form?

There is no longer a compelling reason to hide writing or reading fanfiction, and there are fewer and fewer compelling reasons to hide enjoyment of erotic books. Fear of being judged by others for what we read remains the main one, but fewer women suffer that fear now than in the past. And some readers are empowered enough and uninhibited enough to feel entitled
to their fantasies. They want their erotica and they want it now. They will be the tastemakers who define what flourishes in the “post–
Fifty Shades
” marketplace.

Since fanfic is not bound by the strictures of commerce, creativity flourishes in infinite diversity. No fan writer is being steered by an editor toward what stories “sell” best to bookstores. Instead, the fan writer answers only to the audience itself. Erotic fanfic topics encompass not only BDSM, but “kinks” as varied as bubble baths, healing sex, male pregnancy, frenemies, comfort sex, bromance, and much more. Which will be the next hot trend? Fan writers will know before book publishers do. Fan writers receive instantaneous feedback on whether their stories succeed in moving the audience or not. Since feedback from readers, in the form of comments, is the only “payment” or validation a fanfic author receives, comments are highly prized. A fan writer knows immediately whether a story accomplished what was intended. Did the readers cry, sigh with ecstasy, or reach for their vibrators?

By all accounts, the fanfic originally known as “Master of the Universe” (MotU) had many English-speaking women the world over reaching for their vibrators and eagerly awaiting the next chapter. It is not alone in this regard, as there are many thousands of stories like it. (AO3 shows over 3,000 current stories tagged with “BDSM.”) Also not unique to MotU is the fact that it was eventually collected as original fiction with the “serial numbers filed off” and published by a small press specializing in such “filed off” fiction. Did you know there are numerous small presses doing exactly that? Writers Coffee House Press, the house that originally published
Fifty Shades
, is but one. Omnific is another. (And more are certain to spring up in the wake of success.) Even before the runaway success of
Fifty Shades of Grey
, these publishers recognized two key things. One, that the readers of fanfic have their erotica-loving analogs in the non-fandom world: women who may not be clued in to fandom but who share the same desire for sexy stories. And two, that there
are many fanfic stories just waiting to be cherry-picked where, although an established story, character, or universe served as the initial inspiration, the fan writer ended up quite far from the original.

So it was with “Master of the Universe,” which used Edward and Bella as a kind of virtual Ken and Barbie, merely familiar vehicles for the writer’s fantasies. Some might complain that
Fifty Shades of Grey
is not the best-written piece of literature. Some might feel it isn’t deserving of the attention it receives when there are literally thousands and thousands of erotic fanfics out there that could be considered more original and better written. But the fact remains: this fanfic was incredibly popular among online readers. Whatever one might argue about E. L. James, the popularity of the original fanfic proved that her writing touched a nerve. It moved readers. That’s the ultimate test, and in the seething underground of female lust that is the fanfic world, where thousands of other choices are freely available for just a mouse click, MotU passed that test. In its “filed off,” professionally published form, it continues to do so.

TISH BEATY

I
N 2009, a good friend I’d met through the Twilight fandom introduced me to the story “Master of the Universe.” According to her, the lead male character—Fifty—was everything I’d been looking for in a good fanfiction Dom. He was mysterious, calculating, demanding, jaded, and best of all, panty-dropping hot.

“Master of the Universe” or, as we now know it,
Fifty Shades of Grey
, held me captive from the first chapter. I was drawn to Ana’s unbelievable innocence, and I found Christian’s ability to take command of Ana in the bedroom and otherwise a huge turn-on. While I’d read several BDSM Twi-fanfictions by the time I came across
Fifty Shades
, something about the way E. L. James wrote her characters made their story unique compared to the others.

It didn’t take long for
Fifty Shades of Grey
to garner a following in the Twi-fandom. People could read it on FanFiction.Net as well as at the Twilighted community. I followed the story via FanFiction.Net. By the time I really got into the story, James
must have had over 2,000 reviews from fans. I’d never read a fanfiction novel that had received so many comments in so little time. People were passionate about the direction the story took from update to update. Fans would get irritated at Christian for being too demanding of sweet little Ana or angry at Ana for not being more understanding of Christian’s needs as a Dom.

I visited the Twilighted threads a few times during the months I was reading the fanfic. Twilighted is where James built her original fan base—the Bunker Babes. The Bunker Babes are a group of
Fifty Shades
fans that supported and backed James no matter what direction she took the story. They promoted
Fifty Shades
all over Twitter and the fanfiction communities. They were her sounding board and cheer squad, and were a force to be reckoned with.

I loved reading the story because James took a nonconformist approach to intertwining the BDSM and vanilla aspects that kept the BDSM elements from being too in-your-face. The sexual tension between the two characters made me so hot and bothered that it was sometimes difficult to contain myself, and I wasn’t the only one. Thousands of women all over the world were reading about the “Red Room of Pain,” using the phrase “Laters, baby,” and begging for more between James’ updates.

Prior to reading Twi-fanfiction, I’d had very little experience with erotic romance. As a matter of fact, in college I’d fallen in love with, and studied, Victorian literature, captivated by works such as
Villette, Frankenstein, Dracula, Heart of Darkness
, and
Jane Eyre
. Victorian literature is nowhere near erotic in nature, instead focusing on virtue and goodness.
Fifty Shades of Grey
changed everything I knew about literature and myself—it increased my curiosity, not only in erotic romance as a genre, but also in BDSM as a lifestyle.

In early 2010, I was asked to help in the development of an e-publishing house for the Australian-based company The Writer’s Coffee Shop. The Writer’s Coffee Shop began online as a site for worldwide discussions centered around books, authors,
blogs, and more, and eventually evolved into TWCS Library, where people could post original works as well as fanfiction. I worked alongside the original founders of TWCS’ site to build a publishing house that catered to the needs of aspiring authors. I became a managing and acquisition editor and worked with erotic romance manuscripts more often than not.

As an editor of erotic romance, I feel that the genre opens the doors of the imagination into worlds most readers have never traveled. An erotic romance manuscript should capture the excitement and naughtiness of a first love—the one you lost your “V card” to. It needs to combine sensuality and kink in ways that make the loneliest person
feel
. It should be romance, adventure, love, loss, suspense, and unbridled desire all rolled up into one story. James’
Fifty Shades
did just that and in a manner that didn’t scare off first-time readers of the erotic romance genre.

From the launch of TWCS Publishing House, we knew we wanted to acquire and publish the story that had set the Twilight fanfiction community afire, and we were thrilled when E. L. James chose to publish the series with us. Due to my background in editing and writing erotic romance with the publishing house, as well as my experience in the lifestyle, I was the only choice for editor of
Fifty Shades of Grey
. Many would have been nervous taking on such a task, but I was excited. I knew from the moment we signed James that this would be the chance of a lifetime.

I was given a little over a month to edit and finalize the manuscript with James. Reading through it for the first time after the rewrites was a surreal experience. The structure and characters were the same as the original story that first caught my attention in 2009, but the changes in details made it feel like a first read. James had managed to take her Twilight-inspired story and turn it into a manuscript that was truly
hers
.

It didn’t take long for word of the rewrite and potential release to spread worldwide. James had a huge following of readers
prior to publishing
Fifty Shades of Grey
, and this helped in initial sales. It also made the task of editing the book and keeping it true to James’ intent very important. We knew James and her readers would not take kindly to an editor coming in and red-penning
her
story, and I was advised by TWCS to handle James and
Fifty Shades
with kid gloves. At times it was difficult for me to hold back my natural desire to make changes I thought were necessary; after all, I have been lovingly dubbed “Comma Bitch” by those I’ve edited. Looking back, I’m glad that I refrained from making drastic changes to the story and allowed the characters to speak for themselves, but agreeing to handle the manuscript and James delicately went against everything I stood for as an editor—and if I could do it over, I’d go with my gut instinct rather than sugarcoat the process for those involved.

When I edit, I like to send “bundles” of edited chapters to the authors I’m working with—bundles being four or five chapters at a time. James would get a bundle and sort through it. Once she was done, we’d have a Skype session and go over the changes I’d made, suggested, or questions I had. Sometimes we agreed, sometimes we didn’t. In the end, she always had the final say-so. This was her baby—months upon months of her hard work. It was very important for her to be able to guide the process.

We went through the manuscript twice together in this manner before our final Skype session. The last edits we went over together were those we got back from the publishing house pre-reader. We spent an entire Saturday, seven or eight hours, grinding through the manuscript. As a team, we agreed on some of the changes that were suggested while axing the ones we didn’t find relevant or necessary. It was a lengthy process, and by the time we were done, we both let out a huge sigh of relief.

Working with E. L. James was not as daunting a task as one might think. She was no more particular about her work than any other author I’ve worked with. As a matter of fact, James’ quick wit, tenacity, humor, and the simplicity in her writing are
all traits that contributed to the enjoyment and challenges of editing
Fifty Shades
. Our final thoughts, on that last day of edits, were about the potential backlash from some in the literary community due to the nature of the story and its original life in fanfiction form. It’s a chance we all knew we were taking—a chance I am so thankful James had the balls to take. The genre of erotic romance has been forever changed, as has the world of e-publishing.

I like to think that I had a
little
something to do with it.